One of the great things about Magic: The Gathering is how structured and (generally) balanced it is. Each color has a handful of paths that it likes to follow to victory and if you stay within that framework you can build a decent deck without too many problems. The other great thing about Magic: The Gathering is how the storyline (and yes, for those newbies out there there is a storyline) will often COMPLETELY WARP those strategies. Check out my deck recommendations, after the jump!

Avacyn Restored is coming soon and it promises to have a lot of big scary angels. We’ve already seen one, so I thought I’d build a deck around her. Here’s a old school deck archetype with some new tech…

It has come to my attention that most of the decks I’ve showcased in this column include green. And why not? Green is a great facilitator! It easily increases and fixes your mana so you can cast as many rhinos as you want. That said, I’m down for something different, how about something artifacty in blue?

Magic 2012 is here and it looks to be an excellent core set so far. One of the cards that I’m most excited about is Adaptive Automaton, since it gives us a ‘lord’ creature for any tribe. What does that mean? Well, that means that you can throw an eighth elf lord into your elfball deck, but it also means that creature types that previously were not covered can now get some +1/+1 action.